Mail Online bumps The Guardian out of top 10 Australian news websites
The latest Nielsen Online Ratings have seen new challenger the Mail Online enter the top 10 Australian news websites, supplanting The Guardian ahead of its official launch in Australia next year.
November’s numbers also saw SMH.com.au prise the coveted number one spot from News.com.au, which has held the top spot consistently since May this year, with an audience of 2.94m compared with 2.88m for its rival.
At the other end of the rankings the Mail Online rose to tenth place with an audience of 1.316m, alongside The Daily Telegraph’s paywalled site and BBC website. The Guardian got 1.157m visitors over the month.
Mail Online global publisher and editor-in-chief Martin Clarke told Mumbrella has was very pleased to see it enter the top Australian news rankings.
“This is a great platform on which to build and shows how potent the Daily Mail Australia is going to be once we actually start producing local content to augment our excellent existing global coverage”, said Clarke.
The changes in the rankings are a sign online news is set to become an increasingly competitive space in 2014, with the Mail Online set to make a play to become the most read website in Australia.
Its credentials will be bolstered by adding local content, with the publication claiming it intends to hire 50 jounalists to create the biggest digital team in the country, and combining it with fellow Ninemsn network sites. Ninemsn was the third biggest site with 2.625m visitors.
A spokesman for Mi9, Nine’s digital division and its joint venture partner in the Mail Online, said “at this stage” they would not be asking audience measurement company Nielsen to bring the Mail Online’s traffic into the broader network.
“At this stage we will not be asking Nielsen to combine the Ninemsn and Mail Online numbers,” said the spokesman, who declined to be drawn on whether they might do so at a later stage.
The Nielsen Online Ratings top ten news websites are based on the unique audience of each website.
Fairfax has also trumpeted its win over News.com.au. “This is a fantastic way to end the year with smh.com.au in its rightful position as the number one news website,” said Garry Linnell Australian Publishing Media Director – News Media.
“Even better, the number one ranking and our audience growth was achieved following the introduction of digital subscriptions, clearly demonstrating that Australians are willing to pay for quality journalism.”
Earlier this month, the Mail Online poached Luke McIlveen, the editor of news.com.au from News Corp in a move that is seen as a direct challenge to News.com.au.
The Guardian, which launched an Australian office in May, has moved in and out of the top 10 Nielsen Online Ratings in recent months with an Australian audience across its domestic and overseas websites of around 1.1m to 1.3m.
The publisher has previously said it does not feel Nielsen fully reflects its growth in audience and in an interview with Mumbrella last month its global CEO Andrew Miller said Australian traffic had increased 25 to 30 per cent since its launch.
Nic Christensen
So is it coincidence that he bottom three all have the exact same number?
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Pretty scary that a publisher thinks that there is a 1-to-1 relationship between traffic growth and audience growth, and indeed believe that their internal traffic metrics could be construed as people/audience. I don’t think I’ll be shifting dollars there.
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These can’t be correct.
That three sites would all come in exactly the same defies probability.
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Well Dodgy … that is the most in-depth analysis of online data I have ever seen. Hats off to you.
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Naturally, you’d round it off to the nearest 16.
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Daily Mail audience just looks at the pictures
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Mail Online is on its way to the top of the list!! 🙂
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So the mailonline is counted as a news site? news of what? Random D list UK celeb in diet/weight gain/drink/drugs shocker…. You got to ask yourself what kind of people look at that content, then ask yourself whether your brand wants to be near it…chances are the same audience are watching crap reality TV, so you’ve probably blitzed them already….
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